16.3040, Review: Morphology/Germanic Lang: Motsch (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3040. Fri Oct 21 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3040, Review: Morphology/Germanic Lang: Motsch (2004)

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1)
Date: 20-Oct-2005
From: Guido Oebel < oebel at cc.saga-u.ac.jp >
Subject: Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzügen 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 01:05:41
From: Guido Oebel < oebel at cc.saga-u.ac.jp >
Subject: Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzügen 
 

AUTHOR: Motsch, Wolfgang
TITLE: Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzügen 
SUBTITLE: 2. überarbeitete Auflage
SERIES: Schriften des Instituts für deutsche Sprache 8
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-3027.html 

Guido Oebel, Saga (Faculty of Culture & Education) and Kurume University 
(Institute of Foreign Language Education) Western Japan

The publisher's announcement of this book states that it "describes the 
most important patterns for the analysis and creation of German 
derivations and compounds. Word formation patterns are viewed as rules 
belonging to the lexicon of a language that include all the systematic 
syntactic, semantic morphological and phonological information necessary 
for using complex words. The focus is on semantic patterns, which describe 
the possibilities of the semantic change of primary words from derivations 
and compounds."

SUMMARY

Motsch's second revised version of his book first published in 1999 still 
differs essentially from other treatments of word formation through its 
strictly lexical approach and emphasis on the semantic bases of 
regularities. The author particularly stresses the considerably restricted 
possibility of formulating strict rules and reliable predictions on 
possible word formations. As Motsch himself considers this fact as 
manifesting inherent word characteristics rather than the weakness of 
linguistic analysis, he claims that his analysis has been carried out as 
precisely as possible.

Motsch acknowledges that the description in this book borrows from other 
significant works dealing with German word formation, such as The German 
Word Formation of the Innsbruck Research Centre affiliated with the 
Institute for the German Language (Institut für Deutsche Sprache) and from 
Fleischer and Barz (1992). Motsch deliberately refrains from discussing 
different approaches of description in order to keep his main goal, the 
description of patterns in word formation, from being unnecessarily 
overloaded. However, at the end of each chapter, he provides references to 
related works dealing with word formation. The four descriptive chapters 
are followed by a bibliography, an index, and a list of the most essential 
elementary predicates. 

Chapter 1 constitutes a synopsis of the theoretical outlines, while the 
following three main chapters deal with the formation of verbs, adjectives 
and nouns. Despite their parallel organisation, the part-of-speech 
specifications are clearly distinguished. First each part-of-speech is 
characterized both semantically and grammatically, corresponding to those 
features of importance for morphology, e.g., the semantic categorisation 
of nouns, the syntax of adjectives, and the separability or inseparability 
of complex verbs. After that comes a detailed description of patterns with 
illustrating examples and a synopsis of the respective word formation 
patterns, along with, as mentioned above, a brief selection of related 
references.

Patterns are formulated on two different levels: first Motsch establishes 
semantic patterns of e.g., the adjective, applying:
- transformations ('Umkategorisierungen': from noun to adjective, 177-183; 
from verb to adjective, 183-190; from adverb to adjective, 190-192; from 
adjective to phrasal adjective, 193-195), 
- relations to objects, so-called denominal adjectives ('Relationen zu 
Gegenständen', 'denominale Adjektive', 195-200),
- modification of deadjectival adjectives and adjectival compounds 
('Modifikation deadjektivischer Adjektive und Adjektivkomposita', 269-287),
- word negation (287-295), and relations to events, so-called deverbal 
adjectives ('Relationen zu Geschehen', 'deverbale Adjektive', 295-307) 
(cf. Barz 2001: 55). 

These semantic patterns are described as predicate-argument-structures of 
which their structural-morphological specificity as derivates, e.g. 'bar'-
adjectives such as 'ess-bar' (ed-ible) and 'wasch-bar' (wash-able) or 
compounds, e.g. 'fähig'-adjectives such as 'regierung-s-fähig' (able to 
govern) and 'arbeitsfähig' (able/fit to work), is part of the 
morphological analysis of the respective pattern. Motsch completes the 
patterns under review by giving further details regarding the semantics of 
the basic adjectives analysed, the gradability and syntactic usage of word 
formation products (whereas words other than adjectives are dealt with 
corresponding to their specific grammar), syntactic alternative 
expressions as paraphrases, and the patterns' level of activity (inactive, 
weakly active, strongly active). Particularly worth mentioning is Motsch's 
analysis of so-called elatives such as 'stinkreich' (stinking rich) 
and 'funkelnagelneu' (brand-new) (pp. 279-285) which too often have not or 
only peripherally been considered in other books on German morphology (cf. 
Pittner 2000: 166).

EVALUATION

The most obvious strong point of Motsch's book is that the author not only 
succeeds in a theoretically profound description of the morphological 
patterns of contemporary German but also adheres to a solid empirical 
foundation. Motsch's pattern description is mainly founded on analysing 
scientifically sanctioned text corpora. All in all, the author's attempt 
to describe German morphological patterns has been well accomplished. The 
target readership may be found among those interested in the interface 
between syntax and semantics or in what role word formation patterns play 
within the comprehensive grammar system. It is greatly to Motsch's credit 
that he explicitly refers to a reviewer's criticism (p. 165) of his 
earlier categorical rejection of noun-verb-compounds ('N+V-Komposita') 
resulting in the interim admission that his rigorous point of view might 
at least be open to question (52). Owing to their stringent explanation of 
fundamental concepts, the single chapters seem to be perfectly suitable 
for use in linguistic seminars on morphology; however, due to its 
relatively high price the book will probably be mainly bought as a 
reference work by university libraries (Pittner 2000: 166).

REFERENCES

Reviews of Wolfgang Motsch's (1999) Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzügen by: 
Barz, Irmhild (2001) Deutsch als Fremdsprache 38, 54-55.
Demske, Ulrike (2001) Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 29:1, 75-84.

Pittner, Karin (2000) Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 19:2, 165-66.

Fleischer, Wolfgang & Irmhild Barz (1992) Wortbildung der deutschen 
Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Guido Oebel (PhD in linguistics) is a native German currently teaching 
German as a Foreign Language (DaF) and FLL at Saga and Kurume University 
in Western Japan. His main areas of research are: DaF, DaZ (German as a 
Second Language), FLL with German as L3, sociolinguistics, adult education 
and especially autonomous learning and approaches, particularly 'Learning 
by Teaching' (LdL). In 2001, he established the first and so far sole 
officially certified TestDaF-Centre nationwide. In 2004, he succeeded in 
persuading Prof. Viereck to give a lecture on the Atlas Linguarum Europae 
(ALE) at Kyushu University. At present, Guido Oebel is engaged in editing 
for publication a Festschrift in honour of Prof. Viereck on the occasion 
of his retirement from his chair at Bamberg University.





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